


Meeting in the Mortal World

by Piper Laurie (cnickels)



Category: The Cruel Prince, The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: At least an implied almost-one-night-stand, Drunkenness, Enemies to Lovers, I'm a sucker for a good trope, One Night Stands, Queen of nothing - Freeform, Sexual Tension, Tequila, alternate reunion, the cruel prince - Freeform, what's a healthy coping mechanism?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25582801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cnickels/pseuds/Piper%20Laurie
Summary: Here's how I wished Jude and Cardan's reunion went at the beginning of the Queen of Nothing, after he's banished her to the mortal world. In my version, he actually comes to get her instead of just writing letters (spoiler I guess? sorry) and he finds her using a coping mechanism that's only slightly less unhealthy than challenging a cannibal to a duel (spoiler again, dang it I'm bad at this). Enjoy, let me know what you think!
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 18
Kudos: 176





	1. Jude in the Mortal World

“Do you wanna get out of here?”

I can’t remember the guy’s name. Did he even tell me? But he has dark hair and pale skin, and if I squint in my drunken state, I can almost imagine he’s Cardan. I shouldn’t be thinking of him, but the tequilas have numbed my self control, and I just want to feel something. Anything. I nod, not arguing as the stranger grabs my wrist and pulls me out a side exit, but when he starts to lead me towards the road, I decide I’m too impatient to wait for a cab. 

I yank him back and press my mouth to his, trying to stoke the warmth from the alcohol into something hot enough to burn. My movements are probably sloppy, but he catches on quickly, pushing me back into the dirty wall of the building and kissing me hard. He's strong, but his body is soft and clumsy, and instead of becoming lost to passion, I find myself absently wondering how quickly I could incapacitate him in a fight.

His hands are starting to wander when I hear a familiar, cold voice cutting through the haze in my mind. “You would be wise to remove your hands from my wife.” My eyes fly open, and I shove the poor guy away from me so that I can see the figure standing behind him.

Cardan.

I’ve never seen him in mortal clothes before, but they look far too good on him. I would’ve imagined him in a full suit, or perhaps a leather jacket, but he looks dangerously handsome even in the plain black coat and jeans. 

His expression is hard and tightly controlled, and for a moment I find myself sick with dread and fear. I think of Madoc’s face when he found my parents together, of how he killed them both in his fury, and for a wild instant I wonder if I’m about to meet the same fate. But no, his rage that day was fueled by love for my mother, and Cardan has no such emotion for me. Madoc was seeking the wife who escaped him, but Cardan is the one who banished me here in the first place.

“Who the hell are you?” My unfortunate date, only slightly drunk, actually takes a stance in front of me, as if to defend me. Huh, maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. To his credit, he even holds up fairly well under the icy sneer Cardan sends his way. 

I don’t hear what Cardan whispers to him, but from the glazed look in the man’s eyes, it was a geas. He walks woodenly back into the bar without looking at me. Left alone with my supposed husband, and still far too tipsy, I scowl at him to cover my shock at his presence. “Did you come all this way just to ruin my fun?”

He prowls closer, and answers my question indirectly, as always. “I doubt that mortal would have the slightest notion of what to do with a woman, let alone one like you.”

With each step that closes the distance between us, it becomes harder to breathe, until he’s only inches away. His glittering eyes are locked on me, but I can’t tell if they’re full of rage or annoyance. Either way, that edge of danger is familiar, and I find myself leaning into it. He hasn’t laid a finger on me, but my skin tingles as if he were touching it. The heat that I was looking for is here, simmering in the air between us, and I’m hungry for it. I should say something cutting, something to knock him off balance, but my mind is too foggy to remind me to be cautious, to wonder why he's really here. Instead, I smile.

“Kiss me.”

“What?” I seem to have knocked him off balance anyway, or at least startled him, but his now-parted mouth just makes me want him even more. 

I lean close enough to share breath and whisper, “Kiss me till I'm sick of it.” I wonder if he recognizes his own words, drunk as he was when he said them. I can’t resist pressing close, skimming my nose against the column of his neck to inhale his intoxicating scent, and I feel his hands land on my back. 

“Jude, are you drunk?” I laugh at the almost approving note in his voice and nod against his skin, unwilling to pull away even to look at his face. 

I brush my lips over his throat and whisper, “Perhaps a little,” while watching his pulse jump. His skin is warm, and the air around me suddenly seems cold. I slide my hands under his jacket and snuggle into his chest, feeling more at home than I have in months.

“Jude?”

He sounds surprised again, and I sigh. I probably should have greeted him with hostility and violence, but it feels too good to be close to him again. “Why did you have to come when I'm too senseless to remember I hate you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you good people enjoyed my short lil fic! Let me know if y'all have any requests for other Jude/Cardan scenes, I'm a sucker for them. I'm debating whether or not I should continue this scene, so feel free to weigh in.
> 
> UPDATE: Just wanted to let y'all know that I am indeed working on a continuation of this piece (hopefully with some of Cardan's POV) so stay tuned! Thanks for your support, I'm so glad you guys like it!!


	2. Cardan in the Mortal World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a continuation of the first chapter, Cardan responds to Jude's unexpected behavior.

“Jude?”

My mind is roiling with a mess of emotions as she presses close, her breath hot against my throat. In the past few months of comparative stability during Jude’s exile, I’d almost forgotten what being near her did to me. The intensity of her very presence. In the past ten minutes alone, I’d felt a greater range of emotion than I had in the past few months combined. 

Excitement, as I’d flown to the mortal world on a winged steed, having finally escaped my duties long enough to go to Jude in person, as I’d longed to do ever since she left Faerie.

Dismay, when I’d found her home empty and had to summon one of my spies to discover her whereabouts.

Anxiety, as I’d considered, not for the first time, how I might be received. How angry she must still be, to have ignored my letters. I had all but begged for her return, and it was not like her to miss such an opportunity. I’d started to wonder if she’d received the letters at all.

But even those moments of heightened anticipation were nothing to what I felt when I actually, finally, saw her again. In the span of mere moments, I swung wildly from fury, to desire, to amusement, and back to desire. 

The fury was mostly for myself, for my own foolishness in not coming for her sooner. The sight of Jude in another man’s arms had instantly filled me with stinging jealousy, but one glance at the boy was enough to convince me he was no true threat. Still, I’d not had to stomach the sight of another man’s hands on Jude since her ill fated flirtation with Locke. I’d placed a geas on the boy to ensure that he wakes in the morning with a pounding headache and every memory of Jude stripped from his mind. Laughably merciful, compared to some of my old cruelties, but I had no patience to deal with him. 

With Jude finally before me, how could I care about anything else?

Even now, the whirl of emotions makes me dizzy. Jude, drunken and lacking her usual iron control. Jude, challenging me to kiss her. Jude, pressing close and slipping her hands under my coat, so close to my skin that I feel her heat through the thin shirt. 

Her voice is just a murmur at my throat. “Why did you have to come when I'm too senseless to remember I hate you?”

I had expected a confrontation, hostility, but I was not prepared for this. All my carefully chosen words fly from my mind as her fingers tug up the hem of my shirt until her fingers find the skin of my back, stroking against my flesh, making me shiver. Her warm breath on my neck is replaced by warm lips, and my eyes close involuntarily.

There are things I should be saying, but I can no longer recall what they are. A drunk and affectionate Jude is too much to resist, and I am undone in moments. 

I release a sigh of surrender and tilt my head to the side, an invitation to do as she likes as I twist my fingers loosely into her hair. I wonder absently if she realizes that I am entirely in her power. 

I feel her smile against my throat, and she removes one hand from inside my coat to reach up, pushing my neckline even further out of her way while she explores my collarbone with her lips. The more confident she grows, the more my blood heats. My eyes are still half-closed, but some of my senses return when I catch a glimpse of torn skin at her knuckles.

Momentarily distracted from the pleasure of her touch, I frown. “So is this how you’ve been spending your self-imposed exile? Fighting and seducing hapless innocents?” I should not complain. I have always been delighted to be the subject of either her hostility or her desire, and I find myself very willing to be seduced.

She nips at my jaw hard enough to hurt, and my stomach tightens at that pleasure-pain. “It’s not self-imposed if the alternative is the threat of execution,” she hisses in my ear, then pulls back just far enough to look me up and down slowly, dragging her dark gaze back up to my face. “And I’d hardly call you innocent.”

My mouth opens as I realize that she truly didn’t get my letters. That this whole time, she’s had no idea that she could come home. And in spite of the heat in her stare and the fire in my blood, in spite of her challenge still palpable in the short distance between our lips, I say without thinking, “I’m sorry.”

She blinks, her eyes a little unfocused, and I remember that she’s still drunk. I catch a scent on her breath that’s sharper than wine, and I remember how often she has been the one to hold me upright when I was unsteady with drink. How strange that our roles should now be reversed. 

“You should rest,” I murmur, stroking a hand down the length of her hair.

To my surprise, she relaxes against me, letting her head fall to rest on my shoulder. I hold very still as she sighs, “I’m so tired, Cardan.” 

The fire in my blood banks, replaced by something gentler. Tenderness. It is not a sensation I have had much experience with, but it is not the first time she's evoked it in me. Yet perhaps it is the first time I allow myself to act on it, as I pull her closer and lay my cheek against her hair.

I want to tell you so many lies, I once said to her, but it is the truths that now hover on the tip of my tongue. 

There are things I should say to her, things I want to say to her. That she was never truly banished, that I want her to return with me, that I need her. But even without knowing those truths, even thinking I betrayed her and hated her, even now . . . she is warm in my arms and does not pull away. 

Honesty will come in time. And so, I hope, will her trust. But for now . . . it can wait.

Everything else can wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dearies! As requested: a continuation of the reunion scene featuring Cardan’s perspective. His voice was a little tougher to nail since we never got a proper POV in the books, which is why it took me a minute, but I hope y’all like it. I probably won't be continuing this particular scene further, since that would entail a larger undertaking, but hit me up in the comments if you have any requests for one shots.


End file.
